1. Field
This application relates to dental hygiene devices, specifically to powered dental flossers and powered tooth brushes.
2. Prior Art
Dental flossing is one of the most important personal hygiene tasks. Flossing contributes to the preservation of teeth, gum (gingival) tissues, jaw bones, and even general health. Yet, flossing is loathed by everyone because conventional methods are tedious, untidy, unpleasant, and inefficient. Conventional assistive devices on the market are less efficient then old-fashioned finger-manipulation of floss strands. Available floss-supporting frames provide little help. Changing floss spans on the frames is tedious and time consuming. Users of flossing frames typically use the same floss span for a plurality of teeth; an unhygienic practice. Some products power-rotate a tiny whip interdentally, but that method has little hygienic value. Proper interdental cleaning requires removal of adherent material from under circumferential gum lines wherein rotating a tiny whip is ineffective at getting under gum lines circumferentially.
The patent records show several powered flossers intended to provide continuous automatic floss replacement (CAFR) with some type of flossing action. But none have appeared on the market. A problem in common with CAFR flossers of record found and reviewed by this inventor is that used floss is dragged over portions of the flossers rearward of the flossing tines. This corrupts portions of the flossers that are difficult to sanitize and results in offensive odors.
With regard to powered tooth brushing, several types of powered tooth brushes are in the patent records wherein many have been commercialized. Each of the commercially available powered brushes, however, has a small brush head that can only brush a small area of a dental arch at a time. To use one, a user must direct the brush head to tooth surfaces sequentially on the inner, outer, and the top of all dentition in the mouth. The user must also keep track of which surfaces have been brushed and which have not been brushed in order to avoid missing tooth surfaces that need brushing; hence another burdensome process. The patent records show some proposed multi-head powered brushes for engaging more dental surfaces simultaneously than the commercialized brushes. But these proposed brushes, as presented in the patent literature, appear to be impractical. An IDS listing the most relevant examples of prior art CAFR flossers and multi-head brushes is forthcoming.